At a time when employers have few spare resources to provide higher salaries, the benefits package becomes an even more important recruitment and retention tool. Employers have a number of options at their disposal when it comes to designing benefits packages, including taking advantage of tax breaks available through salary-sacrifice schemes, offering discounts via a voluntary benefits scheme, and giving employees the ability to tailor their benefits to meet their individual needs through the use of flexible benefits.

Our survey of benefits and allowances in 288 organisations reveals the most and least popular benefits on offer, as well as identifing the trends for the future. These summary findings from the survey will be followed over the next few newsletters with more in-depth findings on health benefits, travel and subsistence allowances, and other benefits including long-service awards and pensions.

Also in this issue we look at:

• the pay rises awarded to employees in the NHS; and
• the full recommendations for the national minimum wage from the Low Pay Commission.

We also present detailed coverage of four new pay settlements: Forestry Commission, Orbit Housing Group Limited, the papermaking industry and Western Power Distribution.

Sheila Attwood
Editor,
Pay and Benefits Bulletin

Pay reports recently added to the site:

Forestry Commission: 4% average earnings increase

Orbit Housing Group Limited: 2.7% increase to basic salaries

Papermaking industry: minimum rates up by 3.95%

Western Power Distribution: 4.32% inflation-linked pay increase

Pay review update: 12 June 2009

The latest pay review update table contains pay settlements at AkzoNobel, Birmingham International Airport, Honda, Stroud and Swindon Building Society, Unison, Yorkshire Water Services and many more.

View article in full

Print article

Forward to a colleague

Statistics and forecasts

The datafile contains the most recent inflation, earnings and labour market statistics, pay settlement data and inflation and earnings forecasts. Our panel of City and academic forecasters expects retail prices index (RPI) inflation to fall from its current level of -1.2% in April 2009 to -2.7% in the third quarter of 2009. Earnings growth is expected to average between 1.8% and 2% throughout 2009.

View article in full

Print article

Forward to a colleague

From the blog

Launched and run by the editorial team that produces XpertHR and the IRS e-journals, the Employment Intelligence blog is regularly updated with news, comment and links to the latest employment developments. Recent posts include:

• UK interest rates static at 0.5% in June 2009, and likely to remain so until 2010
• Just how widespread are pay cuts in 2009?
• Paternity leave proposals may be delayed
• Pay awards slump to record low

Today's tip: how to use our RSS feeds

By subscribing to XpertHR feeds, you can view the headlines from our latest articles using a news reader, online feed reader or the live bookmarks facility in your internet browser. You can see new headlines and summaries as soon as they are published - without having to visit the site. A list of links for all the available feeds and more about how to use them is available on the XpertHR Feeds page.

Print all articles in this newsletter

This newsletter now has a "print all" button. Before pressing it, please be aware that this uses a lot of paper. For the sake of the planet and your toner cartridge, consider whether or not you need to use it. If you press "print all", this will send to your printer all articles linked from the newsletter. Print all articles.